So its Good Friday and I’ve always found it ironic that we call the day of the greatest injustice in all of humanity “Good” Friday. Our sins drove Jesus to the cross, and I am certainly thankful that he choose the cross and paid the price for our sins. In that sense the day was “Good” but the realization of how much suffering he went through makes it hard to say the day is ultimately “Good.” Of course, Sunday and the victory over death once and for all is certainly “good.”
One of the things I’ve learned on the race is that the bad things we may endure in our life will ultimately turn out good. Things are backwards sometimes in God’s kingdom. And as I review the past year, I want to take this blog to celebrate the bad times experienced on the race.
First here are the Top 10 “oh no” moments on the race where I simply wanted to go home.
10. Not being
able to sleep in an African bus due to the fact that it turns 50 degrees at
night and I am shivering through the night.
The normal occurrence of a car break down in Africa.
9. One of
many times in which an African van looks like it cannot hold any more
passengers, but the bus pulls over to pick up one more person.
8. Finding out we would be walking the 10 miles down the mud-filled road to make it to our Malaysian village.
The muddy roads of Malaysia.
7. Being so
tired from work in Ukraine on the first week of the race I had to
stop and take an epic nap.
6. Eating
only rice and beans for a week in Gulu, Uganda.
Not sure how the team staying there the whole month did it the whole
time.
5. Being
woken up every morning at 5 AM by blaring sound systems in Cambodia.
Kirsten’s depiction of the music in Cambodia.
4. Encountering many creatures such as spiders, rats, and human-sized lizards in the Malaysian jungle.
3. Fearing
for my life and feeling claustrophobic while one of our Central American
pastors drives us across the countryside weaving in and out of traffic and
driving at times on the wrong side of the road.
2. The
moments in which my stomach began to hurt in the jungle of Malaysia because I
had eaten nothing but rice for three days straight.
1. Riding in
a bumpy African bus for the 4th straight day when a drunk man falls
asleep on my shoulder.
Here’s an African bus experience.
So thats a wrap for “Good” Friday. I’ll be back in a couple of days with a much more positive blog about the good things encountered on the race.
